October 13, 2006

I saw an article on Rediff that was asking the readers to post their opinion abt Azhar being invited to the celebration and felicitation function of all the cricket greats.......I was pissed off with the article as it was titled in a manner that points out BCCi making a mistake in doing so....

Then i read the comments from the users....it was an overwhelming victory for Azhar fans!!!!!!! 99% of the people that responded said that BCCI is atlast doing the right thing...how true...can u imagine the same kind of ban and ill-treatment being dished out to Shane warne, mark waugh, crookes, gibbs....and many other people that were implicated and in some case confessed to accepting "gifts" from "information seekers"....thats the sad state of affairs of Indian cricket where the Board elections take much of the time of the Board members than they working to improve the state of Indian cricket at grass root levels...

Azhar...no doubt did a wrong thing by accepting money (well...that is still to be proved)..though CBI cleared Azhar for not finding any evidence against him...lets assume that he did something wrong....but does that discount his talent as a player??? how abt the manoj prabhakar hidden cam adventure on Kapil, sastri and gavaskar!!!!! people seemed to have forgotten that episode...abt how kapil was implicated in Wadekar's match report and also in the version of Lele then secretary of BCCI.... but all these players are being hailed as "greats" and "heroes" of indian cricket when the man who brought laurels to the Indian team with his brilliant batting and fielding is being tainted as a cheater!!!!!! Double standards of the highest order!!!!!

Gavaskar was quoted to have said "Azhar is God's gift to Indian cricket"...that he was can be seen from his batting record....how many peple can claim to have scored hundreds in their first three tests??? how many can claim to have scored a century in first and last test matches???? how many people would have come forward to take up Captaincy in those turbulent times of early 90's....there was kapil in that team too...so why was Azhar selected???? its based on sheer talent and determination that he rose from a normal player to a brilliant batsmane with wrists that defined logic to all cricket experts....

As far as I can remember anything abt cricket I have been Azhar's fan ....I dont have too much info abt his personal life...but that applies to Sachin, dravid, sampras, Schumi, gopichand, Dhanraj pillai etc also....but based on his talent i can never adore a person/player more....i used to be mesmerised by his wrist work....too bad that i can never emulate even 10% of his wristiness in my own batting:)...but i try and compensate taht with using my wrists in badminton:):)

people have said a lot of things abt Azhar bringing disrepute to the "indian team" and he tarnished the image of the Indian team....he misused the greatest privlege according to some...but is cricket that important to t hose people that are criticing him??? how abt the politicians....we compromise on all of their wrong doings and nevr even bother to find out abt their cases being solved or not??? how come when those issues are far more damaging to the society people tend to turn a blind eye but when Azhar's topic comes to play their use double standards....the contrasting point is that people are evening protesting to save "Afzal" the guys implicated in the parliament bomb blasts but still want to hard azhar after all thses years that he had spent in seclusion and away from public appearances.....